cristoraul.org

THE SELEUCID EMPIRE. 358-251 BC. HOUSE OF SELEUCUS

CHAPTER 31.

THE LAST CONVULSIONS

His victory made the Parthian king sorry that he had let Demetrius go, and horsemen were sent in desperate pursuit to overtake him, but Demetrius was already beyond the reach of his arm. Phraates meditated an instant move upon Syria itself before the new government was established. Had he carried it out, the Parthian dominion might have touched the Mediterranean within the next year. But a mutiny of his Scythian mercenaries—hordes from the steppes of Central Asia—made him instead march east. What remained of the army of Antiochus was compelled to go along with him, but they only waited for the battle with the Scythians to turn their swords against the Parthian, and by the irony of fate the army which Antiochus had led against Phraates did thus in the end destroy him.

To the Syrian cities the disaster in the East came as an appalling calamity. It was not only to the Greco-Macedonian population a national humiliation. There was hardly a house without its private bereavement, for nearly 300,000 men were taken away at a blow. Antioch was filled with the noise of women’s lamentation. For days it was given up to mourning.

Nor was there anything about Demetrius to console the people of Syria for the loss of the well-beloved Antiochus—this foreign figure with the long beard and the manners of a Parthian. With how much affection Cleopatra returned to her former husband the event shows. The second surviving son of Antiochus VII, called also Antiochus, she sent hurriedly out of the country under the charge of the eunuch Craterus to be reared in Cyzicus, at the other end of Asia Minor.

Demetrius in his former reign had been in leading-strings. He had now an opportunity of showing his true quality. The thing most needful for Syria was a period of absolute rest, a time for recuperation, for filling the empty places of 300,000 men. No sooner, however, was Demetrius in the seat than he was elaborating plans for the conquest of Egypt! His mother-in-law, Queen Cleopatra of Egypt, had come to Syria, driven out of Egypt by her brother, Ptolemy Euergetes. She now urged Demetrius to restore her, and promised him that, if he did so, he would certainly add Egypt to his dominions. Demetrius actually marched out to do so, but he got no farther than Pelusium, for there his way was barred by the forces of Euergetes, and Syria, the moment his back was turned, sprang into insurrection behind him. Antioch and Apamea had already renounced Demetrius—the same regions which had before broken away under Tryphon. The disaffection was found to extend to the army which Demetrius had with him. He was obliged to turn back to restore order in his own kingdom.

Nothing save the rival claimant was wanting to complete the situation; but negotiations on this subject had already passed between Antioch and the king of Egypt. Euergetes was only too willing to put in a creature of his own, to counteract the machinations of his sister in Syria. He chose a youth who was given out to be of the Seleucid stock and the adopted son of the beloved Antiochus: he was really, according to the hostile account, the son of Protarchus, some Egyptian Greek of the commercial class. He was accepted by Antioch, and installed with the support of an Egyptian force as King Alexander. The people added the nickname, derived from the native Aramaic, of Zabinas, the “Bought-one”. The situation was once more very much what it had been before the captivity of Demetrius, the legitimate king holding the coast, with his base at Seleucia, and the usurper holding Antioch and the middle Orontes. But although the Jews were adherents of Alexander, he was not so strong in Coele-Syria as Tryphon had been. Ptolemais, for instance, Demetrius retained.

In Judaea, of course, the work of Antiochus VII was immediately undone by his death. Hyrcanus had returned to Jerusalem before the fatal spring of 129. When the news of the catastrophe came he once more felt himself an independent prince, and resumed the schemes of aggrandizement which the Hasmonaeans, their independence once secured, had come to form. He pushed out the frontiers of the Jewish state in all directions, across Jordan by conquering from the Nabataeans the plateau north of the Amon dominated by Medeba, in central Palestine at the expense of Samaria, taking even the rival sanctuary on Mount Gerizim, whilst in Idumaea he not only seized fresh territory, but compelled the conquered to embrace Judaism or go. It was the beginning of that expansion of Israel over Palestine by forcible proselytism which was one of the great works of the Hasmonaean princes.

The decisive battle between Demetrius II and Alexander Zabinas was fought near Damascos—on one of the roads of communication between the Orontes valley, where Alexander was established, and Coele-Syria, which seems still to have been held (so far as it was not independent) by Demetrius. Demetrius was badly beaten and retreated to Ptolemais, where he had left Cleopatra and his children. But Cleopatra had had enough of him, and shut the gates in his face. The Seleucid King found himself an outcast in Syria, not even his life safe. He designed to take sanctuary in the temple of Heracles (Melkarth) at Tyre, but while on board a ship in the harbor of Tyre he was cut down by order of the governor of the city. It is almost certain that the governor was himself acting on the directions of Queen Cleopatra (126-125).

She had lost all patience with the wretched creature under whom the Seleucid kingdom was going to pieces. She herself was the daughter of Ptolemy Philometor and had in her the blood of the Seleucids, and among the crowd of incapables she aspired to take the power into her own hands. Seleucus, the elder of her two sons by Demetrius, assumed the diadem on his father's death without bowing to her superior authority, and she had him promptly assassinated. From her girlhood she had been treated as a thing whose heart did not come into consideration, a mere piece in the political game. What wonder that she became a politician whose heart was dead?

Whether she reigned for any time in her own name alone we do not know. But before many months at any rate from the death of Demetrius were elapsed she had associated with herself the second of the sons of Demetrius, Antiochus, nick-named Orypos, the “Hook-nosed”, who had been educated at Athens. His functions, of course, were to be purely subordinate. His name and hers appear together on the coins, and her head is sometimes placed with his, and in front. Antiochus YIII was at this time about sixteen years old.

The war between the legitimate house and Alexander went on. And, like these later Seleucid wars as a whole, it was complicated with the family wars of the house of Ptolemy. In both kingdoms, the last survivors of the Macedonian monarchies, the same disease of family strife was working doom. Alexander had been the tool of Euergetes, but after the death of Demetrius, Euergetes was reconciled with his sister Cleopatra, and allied himself with Cleopatra of Syria. He sent his daughter Tryphaena to be the young Antiochus' wife, and supported the legitimate house with his own troops.

That Alexander’s power after the death of Demetrius extended beyond the Orontes valley is shown by the coins struck for him between 126 and 123 in Ascalon. We hear of his capturing a Laodicea, and this may be Laodicea-Berytus, of which coins are found with his name.

Alexander Zabinas was a jovial, easy-going youth, the sort of king sure to be popular in the streets of Antioch. There is a kind of happy gamin impudence in the face which appears on his coins. Soon after his entry into Antioch the body of Antiochus Sidetes was sent home by the Parthian king in a silver coffin. It was received in the cities through which it passed with marks of impassioned affection. Alexander sought to give credit to his impersonation by paying it ostentatious honor. The tears which he shed over it publicly much edified the Antiochene people.

The establishment of Alexander Zabinas (129-128) was a fresh blow to the unity of the Seleucid kingdom. The line of Seleucus was indeed fallen from its high estate. Sixty years before, the battle of Magnesia had reduced the heirs of Seleucus from being practically emperors of the East to being kings of Syria. The battle in Media left them not even that. They were now mere captains of mercenary bands, who, in the anarchy to which the East was fallen, were one moment strong enough to keep a prodigal court in one of the ancestral palaces and to devour some part of the country, and the next moment were wandering over-seas to get together new bands of desperados. They were fighters to the end; in the ceaseless battles of the rival claimants the remnant of that energy which had once governed Asia frittered itself away. And the inheritance over which they fought naturally itself dwindled in the process. All who were strong enough broke away from connection with any part of the kingdom, and in the absence of any one central authority, the cities and the numberless local tyrants came more and more to the front as independent agents. Except for the peculiar character which the Greek or Hellenistic cities give to the scene, we have the ordinary phenomena of the break-up of an Oriental Empire.

But with the help of Ptolemy the legitimate house prevailed. The tide of desertion set in its favor. In 123-122 Alexander sustained a shattering defeat. He fell back upon Antioch. There he set about robbing the temples. He first took the golden Nike which stood upon the outstretched hand of Zeus at Daphne. Zeus, he said to the Antiochenes jestingly, had given him victory. But when he gave orders for the image of Zeus itself to be removed, a storm of popular indignation drove him from the city. He fell into the hands of Antiochus and took poison.

After the disappearance of Alexander Zabinas, Antiochus became more and more impatient under his mother’s dictation. Cleopatra saw her supremacy imperilled. On a day when the King came in heated from exercise, she tendered him a cup. But her designs had been betrayed, and Antiochus insisted on her drinking the potion herself (121-120).

Antiochus VIII (Grypos) was now in sole possession of all that remained to the house of Seleucus in Syria. He reigned in Antioch, dissipating in gorgeous feasts at Daphne the scanty treasure of the kingdom, or composing verses on a theme that had a morbid fascination for the verse-writers of that age—that of poisonous snakes.

About 116 came the attack of Antiochus IX, the son of Sidetes and Cleopatra, whom his mother had sent in 129 to be educated at Cyzicus—whence his nickname, Cyzicenus. He had, of course, no legal right to the throne, but an attempt of Grypos to have him poisoned (real or alleged) gave him an excuse to attack his half-brother. In his favor was the memory of his great father, which his surname of Philopator put forward. It was the expectations founded on his parentage probably which inclined the hearts of men to Antiochus Cyzicenus. But the Syrians were soon disillusioned. He had enough of the physical courage of his race, being a bold and splendid hunter, but as a ruler he was worthless; far more keenly interested in mimes, conjuring tricks, and ingenious mechanical toys than the affairs of state. He had also, without inheriting his father's greatness, inherited to the full his propensities to hard drinking.

A new dynastic war now blazed up over the Seleucid realm in Syria and Cilicia. It was again complicated with the feuds of the Ptolemaic house. Ptolemy Euergetes died in 117, and the power was seized by his widow, Cleopatra III. But like her sister, Cleopatra of Syria, she was obliged to associate her son, Ptolemy Soter II, in the throne. There were instantly two parties in Egypt, that which supported the Queen-mother, and that which was opposed to her, more or less openly. To the latter the King in his heart belonged, but he was outwardly subjected to his mother's will. His younger brother, on the other hand, Ptolemy Alexander, who governed Cyprus, was his mother’s partizan. Ptolemy Euergetes had been allied, as we have seen, with Grypos against Zabinas, and these relations seem to have been maintained by Cleopatra. The opposite party in Egypt were therefore on the side of Cyzicenus.

These dispositions were expressed in act, when Cleopatra III, detecting antagonism to herself in her daughter Cleopatra, whom Soter had married, compelled him to divorce her and marry another of his sisters, Selene. The younger Cleopatra was at once bent on revenge, and acted in the spirit of her class. She would give her hand to Cyzicenus, and procure his triumph over the ally of the Alexandrian court, Grypos. She did not come to him without a “dowry”; she came leading after her a royal army. They were troops which, by her own boldness and address, she had succeeded in bringing over from the service of Ptolemy Alexander in Cyprus and persuading to follow her.

Grypos, it will be remembered, had married Ptolemy’s daughter, Tryphaena. While, therefore, the two rival kings in Syria were half-brothers, their wives were now sisters. But this only increased the ferocity of the strife. Cyzicenus was master of Antioch, and when he went campaigning, Cleopatra was left in occupation of the palace there. After some defeat he was driven from the neighborhood, and Grypos, who had Tryphaena with him, proceeded to lay siege to Antioch. When the city fell, Tryphaena asked to have Cleopatra put into her hands; she wished to triumph over her sister in her captivity, and aggravate her humiliation. Grypos was shocked and demurred. Then Tryphaena suspected him of a guilty passion for Cleopatra, and her vindictiveness was whetted by a furious jealousy. Cleopatra had taken sanctuary at Daphne, but Tryphaena on her own authority sent soldiers to take her life. When they entered the temple to drag her outside the sacred precinct, Cleopatra grasped the image of Artemis with a determination over which the ruffians could not prevail. Then they struck through her wrists with their swords. The princess died, calling curses upon her murderers. Shortly after, by a turn of fortune, Tryphaena fell into the hands of Cyzicenus, and he did not spare to avenge.

In 113-112 the position of Grypos in Syria had become so weakened that he retired to Aspendus, in Pamphylia, to raise fresh bands. There were places in Syria where his cause was maintained during his absence, notably the loyal Seleucia. In about two years he came back (111-110) and recovered some part of the kingdom. It is curious that he made the year of his return a new era for the official dating. The war after this seems to have languished, either king acquiescing in his rival's occupation of a certain sphere, without formally making peace, “like athletes who give up a trial of strength, but being ashamed to retire, protract the contest by indolence and repose”. The power of Antiochus Grypos lay in the north of Syria, and he seems to have won the countenance of Rome; that of Cyzicenus in Palestine and Phoenicia.

Of course the feud of the two Seleucid brothers was taken advantage of by all within the realm who hankered after independence, and all outside of it who wished to cut off portions for themselves. Even the kings were obliged to further the work of disruption by conceding independence, where they thought that they could, by so doing, retain at any rate the good-will of a community. Tyre had been already given its freedom by Cleopatra in 126-125, perhaps as a reward for the part taken by the city in the killing of Demetrius II and Balanea in 124. Sidon, where Cyzicenus coined as late as 113-112, attained its freedom in 111, Tripolis in 110. In 109-108 Grypos conceded autonomy to Seleucia, as the reward of its steadfast loyalty to the legitimate king; his letter conveying notice of it to his ally Ptolemy Alexander is preserved in a Cyprian inscription. Ascalon, where coins of Cyzicenus were struck in 109-108, dates its freedom from 104.

The Jewish state advanced by great strides. Hyrcanus about 108 besieged the great Greek city of Samaria. This was in the region dominated by Cyzicenus. But his attempts to relieve Samaria were futile, although in Egypt the party friendly to his cause was now in the ascendant, and Ptolemy Soter, able at last to show his inclinations, sent him 6000 men. So strengthened Cyzicenus raided Judaea, but Samaria fell nevertheless after a year's siege. The Jews effaced all mark of it, and turned the water-courses over its site. Soon after, by the venality of Antiochus' general, they acquired Scythopolis. Antiochus on his side was for the moment strong enough to seize Joppa and put in a garrison, as well as to wrest some other important places, such as Gezer and Pegae from the Jews. But the Jews procured from Rome a decree of the Senate, bidding him restore them, and his occupation was transient.

John Hyrcanus died in 104, but the advance of the Jewish state in power and dignity did not cease. Aristobulus, his son (104-103), assumed the title of king — the Jewish monarchy restored! but not, to the vexation of the Pharisees, in the house of David. Under Aristobulus the Galilee which we know in the Gospels was created. Inhabited by the heathen Ituraeans—a people of (perhaps) Arab stock but Aramaic speech—it was now conquered by the Jews, and the population given the choice of expulsion or circumcision. The majority seem to have preferred the latter, and became merged in the community of Israel.

In 103, owing apparently to a recrudescence of hostilities between Grypos and Cyzicenus, the Seleucid authority had so far disappeared in Palestine that the Greek cities, when attacked by Alexander Jannaeus (Jonathan), the king of the Jews, who succeeded his brother Aristobulus in that year, turned for protection to Ptolemy Soter. Cleopatra had driven Soter out of Egypt and called Ptolemy Alexander home. Soter was therefore now in Cyprus, as his brother had been before. He was induced by the appeal of Ptolemais to intervene on behalf of the Greek cities, and Cleopatra promptly led an army to the support of the Jews. The ensuing war in Palestine only concerns the Seleucid house in that it brought home to Cleopatra how dangerous the alliance which still subsisted between Ptolemy Soter and Antiochus Cyzicenus might prove. She feared that they might make a combined attack on Egypt. Accordingly she helped Grypos in a substantial way, supplying him with the troops which his depleted treasury could no longer procure. She also sent him Selene, whom she had compelled Soter nearly twenty years before to marry, but whom he seems on withdrawing from Egypt to have left behind. These developments must have taken place before 102-101, the year in which Cleopatra falls from power.

It was not the Jews only who pressed in where the Seleucid power gave way. The Nabataeans became about this time a considerable power under Erotimus. He is the first ruler of the Nabataeans, so far as we know, who bore the name of king; and the rise of the Nabataeans, with whom we found the Jews associated in the days of Maccabaeus, runs thus closely parallel to that of the Jews. The expeditions conducted by Erotimus and the 700 (sic) sons, whom his extensive harem brought him, swept the lands which lay along the desert on the confines of Syria and Egypt.

In the North the province which adjoined Armenia, and which we already saw under a rebel dynast in the days of Antiochus IV, Commagene, now formally took rank as an independent kingdom. The dynasty which ruled it was of Iranian, and professedly of Persian origin, like the neighboring houses of Cappadocia and Pontus. But King Mithridates Kallinikos, who ruled Commagene in the earlier part of the last century BC, married Laodice the daughter of Antiochus Grypos, and in this way obtained an affiliation of the dynasty to the Seleucid house. Of their Macedonian parentage the kings of Commagene were still more proud than of their Persian; they regarded themselves as continuing the Seleucid line. Antiochus was adopted as the dynastic name, till the little kingdom was extinguished in 72 AD by the Romans.

While the peoples of the East were reasserting themselves in regions which had once obeyed the Macedonian kings, in the West the outposts of Roman rule already touched the realm of Antiochus Grypos. Rome had become one of the Asiatic powers in 133 by taking over, as the province of Asia, the kingdom bequeathed it by the last Attalus. In 102, some permanent military and naval stations were fixed in Cilicia, as bases for action against the pirates whose nests were in the mountains to the west. The command of these stations constituted the Cilician 'province. The Seleucid King did not lose his Cilician territory, with which the Roman stations on the coast probably interfered little, but their presence was a sign.

Antiochus Grypos married Selene about 102. But he was not destined to live with her long. Among those who stood highest at court was Heracleon of Beroea. From a fragment of Posidonius we may infer that he was at the head of the war department and a strict disciplinarian. He made the soldiers take their dinner in divisions of thousands, lying upon the ground in the open air. Each man’s dinner was a large loaf and a piece of meat, and the drink, wine of the common sort mixed with cold water. The serving was done by men with knives, and strict silence was imposed. Heracleon’s ambition urged him in these unsettled times to look higher than the office of King’s minister. In 96 he murdered Grypos and seized the throne. Queen Selene fled, to give herself to Cyzicenus.

Heracleon cannot long have maintained himself in the place of the King, since Seleucus the son of Antiochus VIII is spoken of as succeeding, without any interval being mentioned. But we gather that Heracleon detached the north-eastern region of Syria, including his native Beroea, Bambyce-Hieropolis and Heraclea, as a separate principality.

Grypos left five sons, of whom the eldest succeeded him as Seleucus Epiphanes Nicator. He was a man of stormy vehemence. He infused a new spirit into the war against Cyzicenus, and took the field with a strong army. City after city was lost to Cyzicenus. In the year following Grypos’ death (in 95) Seleucus defeated his uncle in a pitched battle, and Cyzicenus came to his end.

But Seleucus was not suffered to take possession undisturbed. Antiochus Cyzicenus had left a grown-up son, who almost immediately (still in 95) proclaimed himself king in Aradus, as Antiochus Eusebes Philopator (Antiochus X). He also took over his father's recent wife, Selene, who, since she married her first husband, her brother Ptolemy Soter, in 116, must now have been of some years. According to one account, Seleucus would have succeeded in taking his life, as well as that of his father, had he not been saved by a courtesan who loved him for the beauty of his person. So the dreary circle came round again. Seleucus was beaten, and had to abandon Syria to Antiochus Eusebes, withdrawing to Cilicia. Here he fixed his temporary capital at Mopsuestia, but had soon fallen foul of the citizens, who found that unlimited demands were made upon their property by a king who had sink to be a mere captain of bandits. Insurrection followed, and Seleucus VI perished in the flames of his residence (95).

Then the remaining sons of Grypos took up the quarrel. Antiochus XI Epiphanes Philadelphus and Philip, whose name shows that the Seleucid princes still cherished the memory of their Antigonid blood, were probably with their brother Seleucus in Cilicia. They made haste at any rate to avenge his death by letting their bands loose upon Mopsuestia and pulling down the houses. Perhaps they were twins, as they were called; Antiochus took precedence, but Philip also had the title of King, and his head appears behind that of Antiochus on some coins. Together they crossed the Amanus to attack Antiochus Eusebes in Antioch. But a battle near the city went against them, and in the flight Antiochus Philadelphus rode his horse into the Orontes and was drowned. Philip, however, as King Philip Epiphanes Philadelphus, continued the war. At the same time (in 95) another son of Grypos, Demetrius III, established himself as Demetrius Theos Philopator Soter in central Syria. He was living in Cnidus, when Ptolemy Soter, who was still excluded from Egypt and reigning in Cyprus, offered him troops to try his fortune in Syria. Demetrius made Damascus his capital. He is generally distinguished by his nickname Eukairos.

Within a few months, therefore, of the death of Antiochus Grypos there were three separate Seleucid kingdoms in Syria. Antiochus Eusebes was pressed both on the north and south by the two sons of Grypos, Philip and Demetrius, who seem at this time to have acted in concert. What happened to him in this chaos we cannot make out. Demetrius before 88-87 had possession of Antioch. But Antiochus Eusebes was still holding his bands together in some part of Syria or Cilicia and calling himself Seleucid King.

Demetrius III is the last Seleucid who interferes in the affairs of the Jews. His help was asked by the people themselves, who were disaffected to their king, Jannaeus Alexander. Jannaeus had surrounded himself, like the other princes of the time, with foreign mercenaries—wild men from the highlands of the Taurus; the Jews rose against him and sent to Damascus for help. Demetrius came himself with an army, and at Shechem joined the national army of the Jews. There seemed at that late date a prospect of the Jews by their own act restoring Seleucid supremacy to escape from the Hasmonaean king! But when Jannaeus had been driven to the hills, they thought better of it, and Demetrius was too insecure to entangle himself in a war with the Jews.

About 88 a war broke out between Philip and Demetrius. Philip was allied with Strato, who ruled the little principality which had recently been constituted with its centre at Beroea. Philip himself was in Beroea when Demetrius laid siege to the city. Then Strato appealed to a neighboring Arab chief, called Aziz, and to Mithridates the Parthian governor (of Mesopotamia?). They answered to his call, and the besieger Demetrius was besieged in his turn. He was cut off from his water-supply and obliged to capitulate. The Antiochenes in his camp were sent home without a ransom, but Demetrius was taken a prisoner to the Parthian court. Mithridates the Great, who then held the Arsacid throne (he died about 86), treated his captive with the respect paid by the Parthians to the other members of the Seleucid house who had fallen into their hands. In such honourable captivity Demetrius III ended his days.

Yet a fifth son of Grypos now appears to wrangle over the fragments of the heritage, Antiochus XII Dionysus Epiphanes Philopator Kallinikos. Philip got possession of Antioch, and Antiochus established himself in Damascus. Philip watched his opportunity to strike him there, and when Antiochus was engaged in an expedition against the Nabataean Arabs, he suddenly appeared before the city. Milesius, who held the citadel for Antiochos, opened the gates. Philip, however, had soon given this man offence, and when he went to see some races in a hippodrome outside the city, Milesius shut the gates and returned to his old allegiance. Antiochus Dionysus hurried back on hearing what was on foot, and Philip had to retire. But almost immediately Antiochus started away again on a fresh expedition against the Nabataeans. This time he went by way of the Philistine coast, now dominated by the Jews. Jannaeus tried in vain to stop him by a great line of works from Chapharsaba (mod. Kafar-Saba) to Joppa. Antiochus broke through, and entered the country of the Arabs. Here he fell by a chance stroke in an affray when victory was already inclining to his side.

It was obvious that chaos could not go on for ever in Syria. The house of Seleucus was on the point of extinction, self-consumed by its own disordered energies. But what would take its place? Gradually, ever since the death of Seleucus Nicator, two hundred years ago, it had been relinquishing to the barbarian dynasties the territories it had inherited from Alexander the Great. Mesopotamia had been lost to the Parthian before 88; Commagene had a king Mithridates; southern Syria had fallen to the Arabs and the Jews. Only its territory beyond the Taurus the house of Seleucus had ceded a hundred years before, not to a barbarian power, but to the house of Attalus, from whom it had been inherited in 133 by Rome.

But between 90 and 80 BC it seemed questionable whether the whole of Asia was not about to revert to the rule of Orientals. Two of those dynasties, whose first beginnings we have watched in the days when the Seleucid house was great, were now risen to an imposing strength—the house of Mithridates in Pontus, and the house of Artaxias in Armenia. Mithridates Eupator now sat on the Pontic throne. In 88 he occupied nearly the whole of Asia Minor, and put the resident Romans to the sword, and in the following year flung his armies upon Greece. True, the campaigns of Sulla made Mithridates give back, but the peace signed in 84 was an uneasy one, and left Mithridates in a position to renew the fight. In Armenia the king of the house of Artaxias was Tigranes, who had first suppressed the rival dynasty in Sophene, and then extended his conquests outside Armenia at the expense of the Parthians. Before 83 he had conquered Mesopotamia, and was ready to cross the Euphrates into Syria.

In 83 the Armenian armies overflowed Syria. The men who called themselves kings—Philip the son of Grypos, and Antiochus Eusebes the son of Cyzicenus—are no more heard of. In utter weariness of the dynastic feuds, the Greek cities of Syria acquiesced with relief in the rule of the Armenian King of kings. His governor Magadates now sat in the palace of Antioch, and coins were struck there in his name. The Cilician plain, as part of the Seleucid realm, Tigranes also took in possession, and emptied its Greek cities to make the population of the huge Tigranocerta, which he began to create in Mesopotamia. Only here and there some stronghold maintained itself against the Armenian, notably Seleucia in Pieria, so long distinguished for its loyalty to the legitimate Seleucid King, and now defying all the efforts of Tigranes to enter its walls. About 75 BC the young sons of Antiochus Eusebes appeared in Rome, and were recognized as the “kings of Syria”. They stayed nearly two years in Rome, and showed no signs of impoverishment. They maintained a royal state, and were served with such gold and silver plate as beseemed a king’s table. It is also stated that they came from Syria, returned to Syria, and were in possession of the Syrian throne. We can hardly doubt that it was in Seleucia that they still had a court and treasury.

The object of the visit of King Antiochus and his brother to Rome was to ask to be installed as kings of Egypt. They claimed through their mother Selene, who was still living in Syria. The Ptolemaic kingdom was also suffering from a confused succession. They naturally got nothing from Rome, and one of them was robbed of some of his choice plate by Verres when he stopped in Sicily on his way home.

The arms of Tigranes did not reach the south of Syria. Queen Selene was still residing in 69 in Ptolemais; but in the land as a whole the Arabs, the Ituraeans of Chalcis, and the Jews had it all their own way, except in so far as they fought with each other. Damascus soon after the death of Antiochus Dionysus (about 85) put itself into the hands of the Nabataean king Haretas III, to escape the worse fate of falling into the hands of the Ituraean dynast. The Ituraeans overran the Phoenician coast between Sidon and Theuprosopon, wasting the fields of Byblos and Berytus. On the seaboard between Phoenicia and Egypt, the cities where Hellenic culture had lately flourished, Gaza, Strato’s Tower, Dora, were ruinous solitudes—monuments of the vengeance of the Jews. The peoples of the desert and its fringes, of regions like Idumaea, drifted into the country to efface the marks of the Greek, like the desert sand which submerges forsaken cities. The mixed population, Jewish for the most part in manners though not in origin, came to be classed indistinguishably under the name of Idumaeans. Government there was none. Ordered society gave place to bands of robbers and pirates. The homeless inhabitants of the towns which had been destroyed, the defeated factions of cities which still stood, took to brigandage as their living, or joined the great pirate confraternity.

Only a few cities like Ascalon, which had saved itself from the Jews by a timely subservience, still nursed in this region the seeds of Hellenic life.

Was the work of Alexander and the Greek kings undone? was all the land once more from Central Asia to the Mediterranean to go back to the Oriental? At that moment there wanted but little for the whole to be once more in the possession of native races and kings. Yes; but even the conquests of an Oriental house did not bring about the state of things which had existed before the battle of Granicus. In the first place, these conquering dynasties had themselves, while retaining their native names and memories, assimilated to a greater or less degree the penetrating culture of the Greeks. Macedonian blood ran in the veins of princes who bore the names of Mithradata or Ariorath. Greek was spoken at their courts; they prided themselves on being the champions of Hellenism. Even the kings of the Jews and of the Arabs took the surname of Phil-Hellene.

This consideration would, no doubt, tend to make the Greeks look upon the return of Oriental rule more favourably. At Antioch there had existed a party before 83 who were for calling in Mithridates of Pontus: Tigranes actually came in response to an invitation. But, with all that, the prevailing feeling among the Greeks was one of antipathy to the Oriental dynasties. Do what they might to show their phil-Hellenism, they were in the eyes of the Greeks barbarians still. Tigranes had been welcomed in Syria, but before long “the rule of the Armenians was intolerable to the Greeks”. Perhaps the Greeks were right in their feeling that Hellenic culture and Oriental despotism could not in the long run subsist together.

In the second place, the existence of this great Greek population all over the Nearer East made the situation in 80 BC in reality utterly different from the situation in 333. The Romans found this people, their natural allies, waiting for them when they came to take possession. It was a true instinct which led Alexander and his successors to make the foundation of their work a system of Greek cities. Their dynasties perished, but their cities remained. The Romans had not to begin the work over again. They had but to carry on a work which the disruption of the Greek dynasties had brought to a standstill.

It was in 73 that the Romans put forth their strength a second time to roll back the power of Mithridates. We may regard that year as the date when the tide of barbarian advance which since the death of Seleucus I had, with an occasional reflux, yet increasingly prevailed, turned before the advance of Rome. The last great general who was a sincere servant of the oligarchy, Lucius Lucullus, drove back Mithridates from Cyzicus, marched victoriously through Pontus, and in 69 invaded Armenia, where Mithridates had sought refuge.

Tigranes was at the moment pushing his conquests further south. He was already master of the Phoenician coast, and had taken Ptolemais, where Queen Selene had held out against him, when the news reached him that Lucullus was in Armenia. He hastily retired north, taking Selene with him, who by the fall of Ptolemais had come into his hands. At Seleucia on the Euphrates opposite Samosata she was imprisoned, and after some time put to death. The successes of Lucullus in Armenia brought about that or the following year the complete evacuation of Syria by the Armenian armies.

Now the dethroned descendants of Seleucus saw their chance again. The son of Antiochus Eusebes, he probably whom we saw robbed by Verres some six years before, showed himself in Syria, and was hailed by Antioch as the lawful king. Lucullus gave his sanction. So once more a Seleucid king reigned in Antioch, Antiochus XIII, nicknamed Asiaticus, from some temporary residence in Asia Minor. True to the character of his race, he was soon fighting, with whom we are not told, probably the neighboring Arabs. The Arabs had now pushed into the Orontes valley itself. Emisa (mod. Homs) was the seat of a chieftain called Shemash-geram (Sampsigeramus), who had also possession of Arethusa (mod. Arrastan). With him, however, Antiochus was friendly, and it was probably with the rival chief Aziz that Antiochus had come to blows. About 65 he suffered a defeat, which so damaged his credit at Antioch that there was a movement to drive him out again. Antiochus, however, was strong enough to quell it, and the ringleaders fled. A son of the late King Philip of the other Seleucid line was living in Cilicia, and the refugee Antiochenes persuaded him to try his chances in Syria. He made a compact with Aziz, and was set, as a dependant of the Arab chiefs, upon the Seleucid throne. Antiochus placed all his hopes on the support of Shemash-geram, and the ruler of Emisa moved in fact down the Orontes with his bands. He asked Antiochus to come and confer with him in his camp. Antiochus, of course, went and was instantly made a prisoner. Shemash-geram had secretly arranged with Aziz that they should each make away with his Seleucid ally and divide the inheritance between them. Before, however, Aziz had carried out his part of the undertaking, Philip got wind of it and escaped to Antioch.

When in 64 Pompey, having hunted Mithridates out of Asia, appeared as conqueror in Syria, to settle its affairs in the name of Rome, he received an application from Antiochus XIII, entreating to be restored to his throne. But Pompey had a consciousness of what Rome was come into Asia to do—to establish a strong government which would protect the centres of Hellenic life from barbarian dominion. It was that which the cities expected from Rome, and the restoration of such Seleucids as were now to be had was the last thing they wanted. According to one account, Antioch gave Pompey large sums to refuse the application of Antiochus. The account is probably untrue, but it truly represents the attitude of Antioch. Pompey gave Antiochus a scornful answer. The man who had lost Syria to Tigranes was not the man to save it from Arabs and Jews. Syria, except cities which were given their freedom or the districts left to native dynasts under Roman influence, was now made a Roman province and put under the direct rule of a Roman governor. The kingdom of the house of Seleucus was come to an utter end (64).

What became of the surviving members of the royal house is lost in darkness. Antiochus XIII was sooner or later killed by Shemash-geram. Another of them was invited by envoys from Alexandria in 58 to come to Egypt and marry Berenice, the daughter of Ptolemy Auletes, who reigned there during a temporary expulsion of her father. “He, however”, says the account, “fell sick and died”. If he is identical with the person nicknamed Kybiosaktes by the Alexandrians, what happened is that the unhappy man accepted the invitation and was incontinently strangled by Berenice. Philip II, the last Seleucid king, reappears for a moment in 56, when he also received an invitation from Alexandria to come and be king in Egypt, but was forbidden by Aulus Gabinius, the proconsul of Syria, to go. Then he, and with him the house of Seleucus, finally disappears.

There were still people for many generations who prided themselves on having in their veins the blood of the imperial house. A priestess of Artemis at Laodicea-on-the-sea, in the beginning of the second century after Christ, tells us in her funeral inscription that she is sprung “from King Seleucus Nicator”. The dynasty of Commagene vaunted it, and after the dynasty was brought down, the last members of the family. One of them, Gaius Julius Antiochus Philopappus, put up the well-known monument at Athens about 115 AD with a statue of Seleucus Nicator, his great ancestor. Another of them, a lady in the train of the Empress Sabina, the wife of Hadrian, visited the Egyptian Thebes in 130 AD, and left upon the colossal “Memnon”, the image of King Amenhotep III, some Greek verses, legible today, which record the praises of her mistress and her own royal descent. It is as if here, upon this monument of the dead empire of the Dawn, the powers of later fame would leave a register of their passage, a remembrance of names which in their hour were great, they also, in the earth.